In The Artist's House

1st Half

I grew up in a small town in northern New Jersey, at the foothills of the Appalachians.  When I wasn’t running wild through the woods, fields and lakes, I was hunkered down in my room (or at the basement toolbench) making things.  In high school I snuck out during study hall and read on a rock in the middle of a little stream that ran past the school.  With my mother’s permission I sometimes skipped school and took the Lakeland Bus Lines into New York City, about an hour away.

I went to Bryn Mawr College, the school for cussed individualists, and was only a  middling scholar, but learned a lot and took some studio classes in printmaking and design.  For several years after graduation I milled around — worked as a shepherdess, a paralegal, spent a year in Germany, worked as a non-profit administrator, and married.  I still made things, and often broke rules.

2nd Half

I moved to Indiana, which I had always thought was west of the Mississippi River, and moved up to the country.  I had children, I gardened, and I continued to make things.  Having children also making things was very liberating — they didn’t worry if it was going to “work”, they just did it.   It was at this time that I got serious about fiber art.  When the Younger started school full-time I started making “art quilts”.  I broke a lot of rules.  I learned by doing and I learned from other people.  I fell in love with sewing machines the way some people fall in love with cars.  I started entering some shows.

When the Elder was in high school, the marriage fell apart.  My priority became maintaining a stable base for the girls in their tilting world.  I got my first  liturgical commissions.  I met my Gentleman Caller and things with him proceeded at an extremely moderate pace.

The Elder went to college, and then graduated, and moved to Chicago for work.  The Younger graduated from high school and went abroad, and then to college.  The Gentleman Caller and I  decided to move in together.

3rd Half

So we bought a house in a northern Indiana university town where he works.  We had three non-negotiable requirements — room for a studio that was NOT in the basement, room for a pool table, and room for kids (and others) to comfortably visit.  We found Pergola House which meets our requirements and is as idiosyncratic as we are.

The children, his and mine, visit.  We cook, we work on household projects — always two steps forward and one step back.  We argue about grammar and other important things.   I still make things.  I’m probably still breaking rules.